Italy Part 2: Rome

Mass outside the Vatican

 My friends and I planned our spring break trip at the end of January, and we could not have chosen a better time to Italy; we  left Florence Rome on Monday night and the conclave began on Tuesday! So, of course the first thing we did on Tuesday morning was make our way over to the Vatican. When we got there, mass was being held in St. Peter's Basilica and was projected onto big screens into the courtyard outside. The mass was in Italian, and I could understand some of it since I took Italian in high school. When the mass ended, we went inside St. Peter's, and I couldn't believe that I was in a building where so many important people had been literally minutes before and that was the center of worldwide news. The inside of St. Peter's was incredible, and I was blown away by how intricate all of the architecture, paintings, and windows were.

Altar at St. Peter's

Dome of St. Peter's

Colosseum

As much as I would have loved to see smoke that signaled the results of a vote for pope, we were only in Rome for three days, and it wouldn't have made sense for us to spend hours waiting for the smoke. Understandably, Rome was very crowded while we were there, but since most people stayed near the Vatican awaiting the selection of a new pope, a lot of other major Roman landmarks weren't crowded at all. We waited for less than ten minutes to see the Colosseum, and next to St. Peter's, this was my favorite thing that I saw in Rome. I never realized how massive the Colosseum actually is, and it took much longer to walk through it than I expected. Seeing the Colosseum made me want to go back to my World Civilizations class I took freshman year of high school; I definitely have a new appreciation for ancient history that I never did before seeing the remnants of ancient Rome.

The Colosseum is right across from the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill, and we got tickets that allowed us to go to all three. The Forum was the center of Ancient Rome, and it served as the site of political speeches, elections, gladiator matches, and criminal trials. Palatine Hill is integral in Roman mythology because it's where the wolf that found Romulus and Remus is said to have found the boys, and it's also known as the site where Hercules defeated Cacus. Like the Colosseum, I had no idea how big Palatine Hill was, and my friends and I almost got lost wandering through it.

We didn't let the rain "ruin" our spring break in Rome! 

A stadium on Palatine Hill

During the rest of the trip, we went to all of the "must-see" tourist attractions that we could think of, like...

The Spanish Steps

The Pantheon

The Trevi Fountain

The Mouth of Truth: I had never heard of this before coming to Rome, but according to legend, if you put your hand in the mouth of this statue and it bites your hand off, it means you're a liar. Fortunately, my hand came out in one piece! 

Della Palma: not exactly a famous landmark, but as a gelato place with 150 flavors, I thought it was pretty blog - worthy. The dark chocolate raspberry gelato I had here was probably my favorite gelato that I had the entire time I was in Italy! 

The most exciting part of the trip was on Wednesday night when my friends and I were cooking dinner in our hostel. At around 7:40 pm we heard church bells ringing, and as soon as we realized that it wasn't a normal interval for church bells to ring, we knew that the bells were signaling that a new pope had been chosen! We didn't get to see the smoke, but I loved that we got news of the new pope in the same way that people in Rome found out about a pope before the advent of technology. It was really nice to learn about such a significant event from a source other than the news, a smartphone, or a newspaper. I soon found out from a friend that Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a Jesuit from Argentina, would take the name Francis and be the new pope. Since BC is a Jesuit school, I was so excited that a Jesuit pope was chosen, and I still cannot believe that I was with BC friends in Rome when this happened! I know I would have loved Italy no matter what, but being in Rome when the pope was chosen is something I will always remember.